It is well known that online retail sales (i.e. internet commerce) has grown tremendously since the Internet and World Wide Web became commonly available in peoples' homes. The convenience of online ordering has had an effect on so-called “brick and mortar” retailers who operate shopping locations where people can browse products in person and buy products at these stores. At the same time, some online sellers have worked toward optimizing their delivery times, making online shopping more attractive to some shoppers. As a result, the brick and mortar retailers compete with online retailers, who do not have a publicly accessible building and the numerous costs that go with it. Worse, many online shoppers visit brick and mortar locations for “showrooming,” where they can examine a product in person, and then, instead of purchasing from that store, they order the product from an online merchant. This adds insult to injury for the brick and mortar retailers who bear all the expense and receive no profits.
In recent years, a small number of online retailers have grown to become dominant in the online retail market. A common practice on some online retailers' websites is to provide buying options that allow a user to select a seller from among many sellers offering an item. Different sellers can offer the item at different prices, for different shipping costs, and from different taxing jurisdictions, all of which can be taken into account by the user when making a purchase decision. However, as is common in the retail industry, retailers are often bound by minimum advertised pricing (MAP) policies with manufacturers. As a result, it is often difficult to find a product for sale, online or in brick and mortar locations, below the MAP price. This has left brick and mortar retailers often at a disadvantage because they are not able to offer prices lower than online retailers when subject to MAP policies. This is true even when people buy online for local pick up through a brick and mortar retailer's website. Considering the abundance of brick and mortar retail locations, there would otherwise be a tremendous resource for near-instant delivery/pickup but for the application of MAP policies.
Therefore, a need exists to overcome the problems with the prior art as discussed above.